'Meticulous planning helped'

The Delhi Police on Saturday attributed their successful apprehension the remaining two accused, including a juvenile, in the horrendous gangrape of a 23-year-old physiotherapist aboard a moving bus last week, to "painstaking and meticulous" efforts.

Several police teams, claimed Chhaya Sharma, DCP (south), had camped at Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and UP in their search for the 17-year-old, who was nabbed from Anand Vihar ISBT on Thursday evening, and the arrest of Akshay Kumar Singh alias Thakur, 28, from Bihar's Aurangabad a day later.

"The juvenile belongs to Badayun in UP and is a wayward. His father has an unsound mind and he had run away from his home five years back. On coming to Delhi, he worked with some dhabas in East Delhi and then joined various bus contractors as a helper," said DCP Sharma.

According to police, the juvenile was "liked by his employers" for his style of soliciting potential fares and hence kept getting jobs which he frequently shifted till he reached a travel company in Karkardooma where he was in employment and met Ram Singh.

Police said the last time the juvenile contacted Singh before Sunday's incident was to get some money that he owed him.

"It was this phone number, which happened to be in Ram Singh's phone, that led us to Karkardooma where we found one Bhatia. He led us to the bus contractors with whom the boy had worked," DCP Sharma said.

Later, on the basis of some information provided by other co-helpers of the juvenile, the team raided Saharanpur, Rampur, Meerut, Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad and Trans-Yamuna areas in Delhi.

He was apprehended on the morning of December 21 and produced before the Juvenile Justice Board. The sixth accused, Akshay, a resident of Aurangabad, had not reached his native place initially and had stayed in six different states in northern India.

He was finally nabbed, police claimed, while attempting to enter Aurangabad from Madya Pradesh. Most of the articles robbed from both victims in this case and the robbed cell phone of Ramadhar, another victim of these criminals on the same night, were also recovered.

With this, the Delhi Police has concluded its investigations with Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde assuring the nation that a chargesheet would be filed at the earliest.